


This Ain't It Chief

by Mycelle



Series: Memes are Hell When You're an Android [2]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Connor & Upgraded Connor | RK900 are Siblings, Connor gets frustrated really easily, Deviant Upgraded Connor | RK900, Established Relationship, M/M, Memes, Minor Upgraded Connor | RK900/Gavin Reed, Soon-to-be-outdated memes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-12
Updated: 2019-07-12
Packaged: 2020-06-27 02:09:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19781080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mycelle/pseuds/Mycelle
Summary: Connor begrudgingly recounts his own experience with “le memes” when Nines asks him about it...





	This Ain't It Chief

**Author's Note:**

> I was asked a looong while back to make a sequel for Connor's journey, and I finally got to doing it! 
> 
> Sorry it took so long to come out, and I hope you enjoy!!!

“I finished the report, Lieutenant,” Connor tilted his head to the side, a content grin painted on his lips as he gazed at his partner across from him. Hank grunted in response.

“Got it,” he nodded, eyes not leaving the interface on his desk. He opened his mouth and looked as if he was about to say something else, but Connor felt a presence heading towards him. 

“Connor.” The android immediately recognized the owner of the calm, collected voice, and he turned his head up towards the source as he approached him. 

“Hello, Nines,” he flashed a wider grin towards the android he considered to be his brother. Usually, Nines only gave him a greeting in passing or when he entered the precinct, so this direct contact was rare and always appreciated when it occurred. They had made much progress since the first month when Nines was first activated. “What do I owe the pleasure?” 

Nines offered a small grin, which was only a slight twitch of the corner of his lips upwards. “I heard that the break room is now stocked with thirium. I was wondering if you would like to join me in trying it?” 

Connor’s eyes brightened. He looked over to Hank, who only snorted quietly and waved his hand like he was shooing off the both of them. 

“Go n’ enjoy your blue blood, ‘ya love the stuff so much,” he teased, giving Connor a relaxed grin before going back to his work. Connor beamed and stood up from his seat. 

“Thank you, Lieutenant.” He didn’t really need Hank’s permission per se, but Connor always found it courteous to do so, just in case the lieutenant might need him for something. 

So with it attained, Connor stood up from his seat, gently pushing his chair in (like the polite, courteous android he was) and headed to the break room with Nines.

Noone currently occupied the space, so the two of them were free to chat as they drank the newly-supplied thirium. 

“So,” Connor decided to break into something that had been itching at his processors for the last few days, “How was Detective Reed, after you, well…”

“He was quite fine after I threw him out the window,” Nines responded with no hesitation. It had been a few days since Nines had gone through what Connor dubbed as ‘a week of meme hell’. “There was a dumpster underneath his window, after all, and the height from his apartment was not a fatal one, by any means.” Connor couldn’t help but give a weak grin. Nines would never admit it out loud, but the RK800 knew that his upgraded successor would never do any active harm to the detective.

But then his grin became slightly disgruntled as he already knew what such detective’s reaction was in the aftermath. “And, I assume, once you retrieved him from the dumpster, he--”

“--said he was right at home, yes,” Connor swore that Nines’s eyes twitched, if only for a millisecond (it happened so fast he wasn’t sure if it was just a trick of the eye). “But, fortunately, he had enough intelligence to only say that a few days after the event, so I didn’t throw him out again.” Nines tilted his head slightly. “I was  _ very _ tempted to, however.” They both exchanged a glance, staring at each other for a moment before Connor broke into giggles and Nines let out a huffy breath (his own version of a laugh, Connor had found out once when he had spotted him and Gavin together). They both took a sip of their drink in unison before Nines spoke up once more. 

“And what about your experience with memes with Lieutenant Anderson?” Connor stiffened, almost choking on his drink for a bit before he managed to swallow the liquid and glance towards Nines.

“W-what do you mean?”  _ Play dumb. Maybe if you do, we won’t have to have this talk. _

Of course Nines wasn’t going to take the goddamn hint, though. “You showed signs of already having gone through a similarly harrowing experience as mine,” he oh-so nonchalantly stated. “Having...my own firsthand experience now, I could not help but wonder what you must have gone through with the lieutenant?”

Connor sighed. There was no use in not sharing, he guessed. It was the least he could do, after Nines had shared his own experiences with him. “Well,” Connor rubbed his eyes as he felt a strange sense of exhaustion fill him as he had to dredge up those dreadful memories once more. “To be fair, you lasted longer than me; you withstood seven days.”

“I could only handle five.” 

~ ⭕️~

It had all started on a case, not unlike Nines’s own story. 

It hadn’t been anything special, Connor remembered; it had just been a simple homicide case, nothing they hadn’t already dealt with before. 

Except that Hank had been drinking the other day; Connor had allowed him to as there had been a Detroit Gears game the previous night, but he had stolen a few bottles while Connor had been too engrossed by the game (he found that he quite liked watching sports and always spent too much focus and processing power to preconstructing what was going to happen and seeing how many times he could get it right). He had tried to dampen Hank’s hangover the following morning as much as he could, but there was only so much he could do, and the damage to Hank’s mood had been well set in stone by the time they came into the crime scene.

They were debriefed by the police officers already at the scene. Connor had absorbed the details of the case for the both of them since it was clear that Hank had only been half-listening. Then, they had gone in, and Hank quickly groaned in disgust and turned his body away from the corpse when they entered the room of the murder. 

“Nah, this ain’t it, chief,” he grumbled under his breath. Looking back at it, Connor really,  _ really _ wished he had minded his own business, but the him at the time had been too curious, thinking that Hank had said some insightful thing to the case and went to inquire about it (oh you poor, poor fool, Connor). 

“Did you find something important, Lieutenant?” Connor remembered asking ( _ so, so naively) _ . 

“Nah,” Hank had waved it off, and Connor had wished he had left it there and then, but-- “Just an old meme s’all.” 

Connor wished that the story just ended right then and there, but then he wouldn’t be begrudgingly recounting it, would he? 

“What’s...a meme?” He had been  _ so _ innocent at the time, so so  _ innocent _ . 

Hank had snorted, but then raised his eyebrows when he realized that he was, in fact, not joking. “Oh shit, you’re serious? You don’t know what a meme is?” Connor had shaken his head. He tried searching up a definition of it through the internet, but didn’t come up with any comprehensible answers, or at least an answer that would give context to what Hank had said.

Connor hadn’t thought much about the grin that had split onto Hank’s face at the time, but looking back at it, he would surely describe it as ‘shit-eating’. “S’hard to explain memes, Connor, you wouldn’t get ‘em.” 

Connor had felt  _ offended _ at that. “I can! I just, need a bit more context and information is all!” Hank let out a huff of a laugh at that.

“Yeah, good luck with that,” the lieutenant shook his head. “C’mon, we got a dead guy over here to deal with.” Connor definitely had not pouted at that, but rather started to focus on the case while running research on memes at the back of his head, determined to fulfill the new ‘UNDERSTAND MEMES’ mission objective that popped up in his HUD. He was so sure he could do it; he never failed his mission, after all.. 

_ Poor, innocent Connor. _

~ ⭕️~

The next day, they were on another case; a different one, this time. 

Connor had been observing and analyzing some of the evidence around the abandoned warehouse. There was no body, but there had been a bloodstain left behind; by the victim or murderer, he wasn’t sure. Nonetheless, he did his usual  **thing** and touched the blood sample with two of his fingers before bringing them to his mouth and analyzing the data. 

He knew Hank was right beside him, and he also knew that he always berated him for ‘having that disgusting habit, dammit’...but, that time, Hank only looked down at him and gave him that same grin from yesterday. 

“Weird flex but okay,” he huffed, his eyes lighting up with what Connor would learn to be ‘mischief’ as he waited for Connor’s reaction. 

Connor brought his hand down and tilted his head, feeling a frown forming on his features as he tried to process what was just said to him. “Um...what?”

The way Hank had sniggered just made him more confused, but not exasperated yet, but  _ oh that would come really soon _ . “S’nothing, nevermind.”

Connor whined.  _ And there it was _ . “What? What did you say??” Hank suppressed a chuckle.

“Forget it, I--, yeah, forget it.” He waved it off, but Connor only felt more frustration at Hank’s lack of an explanation. The android replayed the lieutenant’s words over and over, trying to analyze just why he would say that in response to him licking blood. What flex was he referring to? Did he mean the flex of his arms as he lifted them?? But, that didn’t make much sense…

“Lieutenant--” He wanted to ask something for further clarification, but when he came out of his mind, Hank was standing at the edge of the exit talking to an officer. 

For a brief moment, they exchanged glances, and that was when Connor had fully recognized his grin for how shit-eating it was. 

It was...a little surprising how frustrated that made the RK800. 

~ ⭕️~

The following day, it happened at the Chicken Feed.

It had been their lunch break, and Hank had insisted they go to his favorite restaurant (if it could even be called that). Connor didn’t know why he had been so insisting--usually Connor would be able to give him some puppy eyes and he would begrudgingly drop it--but this time, he was quite insisting; his eyes glinted with a bright, almost youthful kind of eagerness, and this time, it was Connor who couldn’t resist it. They hadn’t gone for quite some time now, ten days to be exact, so he supposed it wouldn’t do any harm to go  _ just this once _ .

So they went. Hank drove them there, and at the time, Connor had found himself content with the wide grin that had been painted on the lieutenant’s lips as he drove. He had thought it was because he had allowed him to go to such a greasy food place, and had even thought about coming back again in maybe two weeks if going made him so happy.

Oh, how wrong he had been about his intentions. 

When they got there, there had been nothing that indicated what he was going to find out to be Hank’s objective in coming there (which was not, in fact, only to eat the very malnutritious food). 

He walked up to Gary Kayes, and it was then that his eager grin grew into something a lot more suspicious and familiar, like...yesterday familiar. 

“Hi, can I get uhhh...the usual, and uhh…” Connor shot Hank a baffled gaze. Hank always had an order ready when they went to the Chicken Feed. It was odd for him to hesitate like this, especially when he was just ordering his usual.

What was even more confusing and what caught him to something ‘fishy’ was when Kayes snorted and shook his head. “Aren’t you too old to be memeing?” Connor’s eyes blew wide. Even something like hesitation while ordering is a  _ meme???  _ His eyes darted between Hank and the food truck owner, his processors whirring as they tried to process the context behind how that could be a meme. 

“Yes, yes I am,” Hank snickered, giving Connor that shit-eating grin again. Why was Hank admitting that in such a weird tone?? Wait--

He gaped at Hank, who only barely held in his laughter as he took his lunch from Kayes. 

He could do nothing but stare down at the floor as he was so overwhelmed by the onslaught of information that just came to pass, so much so that Hank had to literally drag him off to one of the standing tables.

When he came to, he saw Hank happily eating his burger, a rather self-satisfied grin painted on his lips as grease smeared onto his beard.

The sight of such a clear expression of how smug the lieutenant was feeling (no doubt because of how he could see how much this was  _ besting _ him) made Connor’s eyes twitch.

~ ⭕️~

The day after that, they revisited the first case, the one they had been investigating on the very first day this hell began.

The autopsy had just been finished, so they went down to the morgue to examine the body.   
  


He noticed Hank seemed to be looking around for something, going so far as to walk . Connor had mistaken the way his eyes scanned their surroundings for him looking for clues (which was!! The most logical conclusion!! But oh, he was  _ still _ so naive). 

“Hey, Connor.” Said android turned around to face his partner...who had that damned  _ shit-eating grin _ again. He immediately frowned, not liking where this was going to be going. His hesitation must have clearly shown on his expression without him meaning to, as the lieutenant’s grin actually grew wider.

He gestured towards the trash can. “Free real estate.”

Connor stared at him. 

“ _...What?”  _ He could practically feel his fans start to kick in as it takes almost all of his processing power to just  _ understand _ and unpack all the implications in that simple gesture paired with that simple yet  _ incomprehensive _ phrase. What does he mean by ‘real estate’? Does he mean someone can live there? Why is it  _ free _ ? Is it supposed to be a nod towards poverty, or towards Hank’s own self-deprecation?? But what does that have to do with what they’re currently  _ doing?? _

It was then that Connor realized that the lieutenant was just messing with him, as was quickly obvious with the way his lips pursed as they twitched upwards in a failed attempt to suppress a laugh. The android could feel his eye glitch out with a twitch. 

The  _ bastard _ .

~ ⭕️~

Connor had let out an exasperated sigh. These past few days had been quite the..frustration. Not only was it frustrating that he wasn’t able to get any further in understanding ‘memes’, but it was also quite frustrating that  _ Hank _ was dropping them left and right to the point where Connor either had no idea what was going on, or he didn’t even  _ realize _ that he had. 

“This really ain’t it, chief,” he grumbled under his breath, his hand running through his hair. It stopped midway with a slight jolt, his whole body seeming to malfunction as his processors finally caught up to what he had just said. He dropped every current process to replay what he had just said, his body stock-still. Across from him, Hank’s wide-eyed stare and growing smile were definitely not lost on him despite the translucent screen broadcasting data between them. 

Slowly, his gaze came up from the table to the lieutenant. They made eye contact for exactly 37 seconds before Connor quietly whispered, “Oh my ra9.” 

Connor sees Hank’s grin widen. He suddenly does not like where this is going, not even needing any preconstruction programs to tell him what that shit-eating grin meant. 

“Yeah, that--”

“ _ Don’t _ ,” Connor tried to cut him off with a hushed, horrified whisper, but the lieutenant still didn’t  _ listen-- _

“Really ain’t--”

“ _ Please--” _

“It, chief.” 

Something within Connor snapped right then and there. “MISSION FAILED” flashed in the corner of his vision, but he immediately dismissed it with a silent groan, letting his head clash with the surface of his desk. He just--he gave up, he’s done. He vaguely registered the sound of Hank laughing his ass off, but he didn’t have it in himself to really care. There was no use in understanding memes, and he definitely wasn’t going to give up his  _ fucking sanity _ to try and understand them, especially when  _ he himself starts to use them without even realizing.  _

**_He still doesn’t know what they fucking mean for fuck’s sake._ **

~ ⭕️~

“And that’s why I stopped trying to comprehend memes,” Connor took a long last swig of the now-cold thirium in his mug. 

“That...sounded like quite the experience.” Nines blinked, eyes flickering to the side for the moment before coming back to Connor. 

“I did try to warn you for a reason,” he responded flatly. He now understood the appeal of alcohol if it really could help him forget that horrible experience. Staring at his thirium-stained mug, he wondered when they would invent android-friendly alcohol. He’d be the first in line to try it, definitely. 

“What happened after that?” Nines mused, genuine curiosity laced in his tone. 

“He tried to do more memes, but when it was clear I wasn’t reacting, he let it be,” Connor shrugged. Hank had laughed a few times when he saw how much Connor was blatantly skirting around any time he used memes and had let it go in a good-natured way instead of rubbing it in (though he did try to do that once; it didn’t end well for Hank). 

“That is a lot humbler than what Gavin did,” Nines nodded, his expression twitching ever so slightly. 

“What did Detective Reed do?” Connor questioned, suddenly feeling a bit nervous.

“He--”

“Damn, he  _ thicc _ !” Gavin cupped his hands and yelled from behind Nines, making the two RK’s flinch. They turned around to see the detective with a wide smirk painted on his lips as he leaned against Hank’s desk. It sent both him and Hank, who was sitting right beside him, cackling. Some people in the precinct rolled their eyes and continued on with their lives, while others had a good snort or two but also were unperturbed (Tina was the only exception, with a hand clasped over her mouth to suppress her laughter). 

Both Connor’s and Nines’s eyes twitch.

“Shall we, as they say, ‘do it to ‘em’?” Nines offered with a tilt of his head. Connor could see the malicious glint to his blue eyes, and Connor only smiled, knowing that his own eyes probably reflected the same.

“Yes, let’s shall.” 

Both Detective Reed and Lieutenant Anderson stopped cold in their uproarious laughter as their android partners approached them with quite a murderous gaze.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you liked it! Come yell at me and give requests at [my tumblr (mycelle-hell)](https://mycelle-hell.tumblr.com) if you'd like!


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